After I stopped being possessed by Ms Judy Sargento, I spent a lot of time watching TV. I didn’t know what else to do. I had been possessed by her for three years, during which time I had broken up with my long-term boyfriend, graduated college, moved cities, and spent a lot of time watching TV during the day, wandering the streets outside of the clubs at night, and acquiring a lot of credit card debt. It was what Judy wanted, I guessed. I didn’t know what I wanted.

It felt empty, without her there.

I had never intended to get possessed, no one does. But when I bought a thrift store 70s gown, there she was, in the back of my mind. Judy. I was twenty one and lonely, even with my boyfriend (who I had met online and worked retail and always seemed a little distant; and even though we had been dating for two years, I never met his parents). So when Judy asked if she could take the reins, just for a night, I let her.

How was I supposed to know she wouldn’t give them back? How was I supposed to know that allowing a ghost/demonic force/sexually frustrated recently deceased woman who peaked in 1973 to control your body was a bad idea? It’s not like they teach you that in engineering school.

It’s a miracle I got my degree. I was only a few weeks out from graduating, and I was trapped behind the eyes of a woman who wanted nothing to do with college. It took weeks of bargaining just to get her to take my finals, me whispering my best guesses for answers from modules I couldn’t even get her to look at. But Cs get degrees, even though we never used it.

We. My body. Judy’s mind. But still, I was there, watching as she went to bars and talked up men, mannerisms strange in my body. I was there, watching as she took out loans in my name, bought plane tickets to what must have been her city, years ago. She grumbled about how it was all so different. But we lived there anyways. She, and I.

Judy and I fought a lot. I would yell at her, criticize her every move. In revenge, she wouldn’t brush her teeth. Judy refused to exercise. I had liked to hike. She liked to smoke. Never went outside the city, didn’t drive, didn’t own a car. And when we were alone she would berate me, pinch at my body and ask me why my legs weren’t any longer.

That’s probably why she left. Judy. Sick of my legs or my stomach or some other part of my body. She had gotten rid of the dress years ago, but she didn’t leave with it. Her leaving was unannounced. Unexpected. I’d say it was unplanned, but I don’t think it was unwanted. I had been feeling her dissatisfaction for weeks. Still, it was so sudden. One minute we were arguing on the couch, some awful daytime talk show in the background, and the next, she was gone, and I could move my fingers for the first time in years.

I had almost forgotten how to breath. My chest pushed in and out. I pulled myself upwards, hands pressing against the sofa, legs on the floor. When I stood, it was almost painful. I was so off-balance, I felt like a child again. I breathed. Observed the room.

And then I sat back down. The TV was on. I felt Judy’s absence in my brain, like a forgotten thought, on the tip of my tongue. But I knew she was missing. And here I was in the apartment she had decorated, on the couch she had bought with money I didn’t have. And the sheer vastness of what I would need to do in order to get my life back together overwhelmed me more than being trapped inside my own body. I felt the weight of the corduroy couch beneath my bare legs. I enfolded myself into it.

And I asked myself, ‘What would Judy do?’